Giving away cards at a demo

When you run a demo, do you guys give away cards from you personal collection to new players to entice them into playing? Or just give away the demo materials and call it good?
I was thinking about picking up bulk commons and uncommons to give to newbies at a demo. Thoughts?

One thing you can do is invite people to play with your local group and offer to lend them decks to try out. You might even say, "Hey, we'll play with similar decks so we're not using our Mr. Suitcase stuff against you while you learn." If they're still interested in playing, give them starter decks or decks made out of commons and uncommons. The barbed wire dekcs Ankha mentioned are a good place to start:

extrala.blogspot.de/2011/06/barbed-wire-project.html

Stealth-bleed decks are among the cheapest to build. Tzimisce wall decks should also be cheap, as well as Tremere/!Tremere bruise-bleeders.

For starter decks, I've had a lot of fun lately playing with the contents of 2 Akunanse or 2 Osebo starters. If I win starter decks at tournaments, I usually save them to give to new players or players who need cards. At the NAC at Origins one year, we (not just the event organizers but all the players) decided to pull a couple boxes of starter decks out of the prize pool and gave them to a player who recently started a playgroup whose players needed cards.

VEKN used to have some Black hand starters available for handing them out the newbies after demos.

Perhaps some are still available (or they might all be gone already...).


It used to be possible to get them from Walsh & Nusser in Europe and, IIRC, from Rose Tatu Productions in USA (David is quite busy right now so, if he still is able to supply them, it'll probably take weeks before they'll be sent.)